


The Lie Upon Your Sleep

by coshie



Series: Spaces Between [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bad Dreams, F/M, Hawke Has Issues, Implied Anders/Hawke - Freeform, In the Fade, Nightmares, Poor Hawke, The Fade, because i love her so much?, i keep torturing her?, i wish i didn't have to keep using that tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 05:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14743209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coshie/pseuds/coshie
Summary: “How did you sleep?”  Hawke dreaded the question.  For years, she didn’t have to answer the question because it hadn’t been asked of her.  Anders wasn’t in the habit of talking first thing in the morning - or, honestly, for most of the day - and when she awoke alone, drenched in sweat, clutching the blanket to her chest, she felt the answer was obvious and was glad no one was there to ask it.Stand-alone addition to "Spaces Between"





	The Lie Upon Your Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> This is set before and during "Spaces Between", but if you haven't read it - and don't want to read a novel-length story as a set-up for this one-shot - don't you worry your pretty little head. This is basically stand-alone, aside from some references to happenings from "Spaces Between".
> 
> And if you have read "Spaces Between", this is some stuff that I couldn't fit into it because it didn't fit the tone properly. It also helps kind of explain some stuff, and foreshadows the ending? Kind of? I don't know; I'm just trying to justify why I keep torturing this poor girl.

With passion’d breath does the darkness creep.  
It is the whisper in the night, the **lie upon your sleep**.  
_ Transfigurations 1:5 _

“How did you sleep?”

Cullen would smile at her in the morning when he woke up next to her.  Hawke was usually already sitting up in bed, reading. She would smile back and assure him that she had slept fine, lying through her teeth.  Cullen would give her a kiss, then roll out of bed to start his day, and Hawke would disappear for a bit so they didn’t show up to breakfast together and raise questions.

“How did you sleep?”

Varric would accept the tea that she brought to him every morning.  Hawke would tell him that she slept all right, and he would give her a very patient look over the steaming mug, which she would avoid and begin talking about what she had planned for the day.  Varric would sigh, and join the conversation, adding a few well-placed teasing remarks.

“How did you sleep?”

Hawke dreaded the question.  For years, she didn’t have to answer the question because it hadn’t been asked of her.  Anders wasn’t in the habit of talking first thing in the morning - or, honestly, for most of the day - and when she awoke alone, drenched in sweat, clutching the blanket to her chest, she felt the answer was obvious and was glad no one was there to ask it.

She did not sleep well.  In fact, she slept quite poorly.  Aside from the sheer stress of whatever her most recent troubles were - Anders, Kirkwall, Varric, Anders, the Inquisition, Anders - her dreams made her sleep far more troubled than any of her waking hours.

Hawke was a mage.  She regularly touched the Fade for a bit of power for spells.  She used to meditate when she was younger, and found the Fade to be a relatively peaceful place in which to escape (if she ignored the demons, which she usually did).  But in recent years, the Fade had become a much darker place: tragedy after tragedy across Thedas had stained the other side of the Veil with bloodshed and pain. With her mind fracturing more by the day, Hawke was unconsciously drawn towards the darker corners.  The Fade was no longer a place for her to escape.

And then there was Anders.

Months after he had left her, days after she had found herself back in Kirkwall, Hawke slept restlessly one night while her mind drifted through the realm of dreams.  And that’s when she heard it for the first time.  _ H a w k e _ .

Her name, carried on the nonexistent wind, wound around her head, seeping into her mind.  There was no discernable source; just her name drifting to her endlessly. Again and again.   _ Ha w k eHaw keH awk eH aw ke… _  Endless and inescapable.

When she woke in the morning, she was panting, drenched in a cold sweat, huddled in her blanket in the corner of her room.  The pillow on her bed was torn in half, and the sheets were pulled up. It looked as though her room had been the site of an animal attack.

She knew that voice.

That voice had spoken to her many days and nights past; she would recognize her name on its breath anywhere.  Anders.

Varric had found her at noon, sitting on the edge of her newly-made bed, holding half of the pillow in her hands.  She didn’t say anything. When he had asked her what was wrong, she smiled, and set the pillow down, and laughed. The first of many lies that she would hate herself for spilling to her best friend.  “Nothing!” she said cheerfully. But he would know; Varric always seemed to know. “Come, let’s see what Aveline has for us today.” But he wouldn’t call her out on it, because Varric also knew that she only lied for very good reasons.

Her mind was quiet that day, but it would be the last day she would take the silence for granted.

When she slept that night, it was the same thing:  her name followed her everywhere she travelled in the Fade, no matter how fast she ran, no matter how dark the corner she hid in.  At least when she woke the next morning, she was still in her bed, and most everything was in tact. She sat for long minutes, attempting to regain what little composure she could manage first thing upon waking.

But then she heard Anders’ voice again, quiet, like a whisper at the base of her head, a breath against the back of her ear.   _ Hawke _ .  She nearly jumped out of her skin, and leapt to her feet, hands outstretched as if expecting to find an attacker in some corner.  There was no one. Of course there wasn’t.

Try as she might to shake it, the voice,  _ Anders’ voice _ , was with her.  She went about her day, doing her best to ignore it, but it followed her in the waking world just as it did in the Fade.  At least this was just a whisper, just a shade of the voice that hounded her sleep; however, it remained a constant reminder of what awaited her every night.  Every night.

She started to sleep less and less.  On good nights, she managed two or three fitful hours.  On bad nights, she went without entirely. The bad nights became more frequent; Varric started to notice something was wrong with her.  But Hawke was stubborn in her avoidance of talking about the problem. She waved it off, distracting him, doing anything she could to avoid admitting what she was going through.

It was fifteen days of Anders calling her name everywhere she went before his voice would say anything else.

_ Hawke, I’m sorry. _

It was evening, in the Hanged Man; she was in the middle of a game of Wicked Grace with Varric and a handful of the City Guard when the apology came.  She had stood so suddenly, her chair had fallen backwards. Everyone had looked up at her, startled. “Did you hear that?” she hissed.

Varric had led her outside for some air, and after a few shaking breaths, she finally told Varric what had been happening.  He had marched her back inside, past the bewildered guard, and up the stairs to his suite, where he sat her down with a cup of tea.  He went back to the guard, explained that Hawke had heard so-and-so say something very untowards about her cousin in the din of the tavern, and he had talked her down from starting a fight, but she would not be joining them to finish the game.

It had taken many hours of exhausting herself with talking to Varric - and the help of some rather strong liquor - before Hawke was able to fall into anything resembling sleep.

While she slept, the voice was clearer.  “ _ Hawke, I’m so sorry.  I’m sorry, Hawke, I’m so sorry. _ ”  Hawke was determined:  she was not going to let a voice get the better of her.  Especially not that voice. Not Anders’ voice. No, she was not going to let him haunt her anymore than he already was.

She tried to focus on the voice, tried to figure out where it was coming from.

Nowhere.

The harder she focused, the more unfocused the voice became.   _ Ha wkeI’ms orryHaw k e I ‘ m s o rryHaw keI ‘mso rryHa w k eI’ms or r y _

“Stop!” she shouted into the void around her.  It didn’t. “Stop calling my name! Stop it!” It continued calling.  She screamed into the void around her, falling to her knees. Ghostly tears spilled from her eyes.  “Please,” she begged. Still, the voice came, louder. “ _ Please _ ,” she screamed, her voice cracking.  Louder, and louder, like an oncoming stampede, the voice swelled, constricting her breathing.

Then, it came to her:  “Anders!” she shouted.

Finally:  silence.

He needed to know that she knew it was him.  Of course she knew. How could she not?

Ethereal tear tracks on her cheeks, she faced the dark green and blue  _ nothing _ around her, taking shaky breaths.  “Anders,” she called again. Her voice was broken, cracked, falling to pieces inside her chest before cutting her tongue on their way out, making her taste blood and  _ fear _ .  “Please, stop.”

_ H a w k e _

“No, you need to stop,” she insisted, clutching her hands to her chest.  Her voice shattered, her heart following suit. “Anders, please, leave me alone.”

_ HawkeI’ms _

“No!” she shouted again, clenching her eyes shut, and the Fade pulsed with her frustration.  “I don’t care! You need to be quiet, you need to stop calling my name!”

_ orryHawke _

She was wrenched out of the nightmare by Varric’s voice in her ear, overwhelming Anders’, and his hands on her shoulders.  She opened her eyes to see that she was sitting up in his bed, tears rolling down her cheeks. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the blanket.  Varric looked worried. “Bubbles,” he said, reaching up to touch her face. “What happened?”

She broke.

Hawke hugged Varric, hung from him, clinging to him for any kind of support he could offer her, crying into his neck.  He held her, though he was convinced she’d slip away; he told her it would be all right, recognizing the taste of a lie, but willing it to be true nonetheless.

Twenty minutes later, she was sleeping lightly again, having exhausted herself once again.  But Varric couldn’t sleep. He stayed up for the rest of the night to watch Hawke toss and turn, mumbling in her sleep.  But this time, she stayed asleep; this time, she didn’t shoot up with a scream, she didn’t call out to Anders, she didn’t start crying.

When morning came, Hawke woke up, fatigue evident in every slightest movement she made.  Varric already had breakfast for her, but she didn’t get through more than a couple bites.  They spent the morning talking about what was going on. Hawke told him about her dream. He asked if she could still hear the voice.

And that’s when she finally realized:  an hour of being awake, but pure exhaustion had taken away her awareness.  “No,” she said slowly. “N-no, I… I can’t.”

Silence.

There was silence in her mind.

She was still filled with the same dread that had followed her for the past two weeks, she was still on edge as she expected to feel the whisper against her skin again.  But aside from the slightest breath that wisped across the back of her neck when she let her guard down, she could no longer hear Anders.

While this meant that her waking hours became less stressful, Hawke soon found that her nightly journeys to the Fade were no different.  Anders was still calling out to her, but had, at least, learned new words.  _ Hawke I’m sorry, Hawke where are you, I’m so sorry, Hawke please, where are you, I’m sorry, Hawke _ .

She gave up on trying to find him.  It was a fruitless effort. At least when she was awake, she could enjoy the relative silence.  Dread-filled silence, but under the circumstances, it was the best she could hope for. Regardless, the silence was a constant reminder of what was missing.  Sleep became no easier, as she dreaded it no less.

“How did you sleep?”

Varric stopped asking.  He knew the answer already.  If she had it her way, Hawke wouldn’t sleep at all.

 

* * *

 

Months later, and Hawke had accepted her fate:  a ghostly voice following her while she slept, and a silent dread haunting her when she woke.  Hawke stopped using her magic as much, as well. Even touching the Fade briefly was enough to make her skin crawl with the anticipated whispers, and a strong enough spell would have the voice breathing over the shell of her ear, dripping into her mind, and cold fingers on her spine.  But limiting her use of magic was a solution; not the best solution in such troubled times, but a solution nonetheless.

And then came the Inquisition.

She should have known that when Varric had sent word that he could use her help that things were going to go sideways.  Varric had been quite insistent that Hawke remain in Kirkwall and  _ rest _ and avoid getting into trouble.  So a request from him for assistance was the prelude to trouble.

Adamant.  The mages; blood mages, of course.  The dragon. The fighting.

The Fade.

  
  


Hawke stood in the clearing, and watched Alice, Bull, Sera, and Stroud walk ahead.  Varric had started to walk forward with them, but had stopped when he noticed that Hawke had not moved.

“Bubbles?” he questioned.

Her face was set in hard lines, her eyes focused on something in the middle distance that only she could see.  She was gripping her staff with both hands in front of her. She wasn’t moving.

“Hawke,” Varric said again, walking back towards her.

“Can you hear it?” she whispered.

Varric glanced around; aside from a dull, pulsing hum, indistinct noise, and Alice talking with Stroud, he heard nothing.  “Hawke,” he said firmly, reaching out to her.

“It’s Anders,” she whispered.

His hand stopped just as it was about to touch her arm.  She still hadn’t looked at him. She was tense; her knuckles were white on her staff.  Varric frowned. “You’re hearing his voice again.”

Suddenly, she smiled.  Her demeanor failed entirely to reflect this change of expression - her hands starting shaking from their death grip on her weapon - but hard lines softened, and her face relaxed into a smile.  “No,” she said. “No, not his voice. it’s Anders. I’m hearing…  _ him _ .”

Varric’s expression only became more worried, and he frowned at her.  But before he could say anything, she laughed. Laughed. Finally, she let her hands relax, and stashed her staff in its holster on her back.  She rubbed her head, and Varric was surprised to find that he wasn’t surprised to see a few tears roll down her cheeks. “It’s Anders,” she whispered.

By now, the others had realized that Hawke and Varric hadn’t followed them, and had stopped near a flight of stairs at the far end of the clearing.  Alice was walking back towards them.

“Bubbles,” Varric said, taking a step closer and putting his hand on her arm.  She jumped slightly as if she hadn’t expected it, looking around at him as though unaware he had been there.  “We have to go.”

Hawke was still chuckling slightly, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.  “I know,” she said, smiling at Alice when she joined them with a concerned look. “I’m fine, I’m all right,” she insisted, convincing no one.  “I’m sorry, I just--- I was surprised to hear Anders again. We can go,” she continued, motioning forward. “We need to find a way out, I know.”

Alice glanced to Varric, who shrugged, before giving Hawke one more wholly unconvinced look.  But she rejoined the others regardless, this time with Varric and Hawke in tow.

“You’ve been hearing Anders for months,” Varric said as they hung towards the back of the group.  “What do you mean, you were surprised to hear him again?”

She was still smiling, though her eyes remained slightly watery, as if she might break out into tears at any moment.  “No, no,” she said. “No, before, it was--- hmm, I don’t know how to explain. Before, I couldn’t really tell the difference.  It was just his voice, not… not  _ him _ .  But now, probably because we’re in the Fade proper, now I can  _ feel _ him.  And it’s him.  Just him. No Justice, just Anders.  I haven’t heard  _ just Anders  _ in years.  But… but it’s him.  The voice I’ve been hearing at night, all this time, I was convinced it was Justice tinted with Anders.  But it wasn’t, this whole time, it’s been Anders.”

Varric sighed and shook his head slightly.  “And you’re happy about this?”

She laughed, and a couple tears spilled from her eyes.  “Varric, my heart is about to shatter entirely,” she admitted, wiping the tears away.  “Do you know what it means that  _ Anders _ \- not Justice,  _ just Anders _ \- is calling out to me?”

“I doubt it,” he said.

“It means Anders is in the Fade.”  She took a shaky breath, then let out a shaky laugh.  “I don’t know for sure, but I suspect there is no longer a separation between them in his physical body.  I feel that this means that Anders is not in control any longer. And the last remnants of him, of his mortal mind, are trapped in the Fade, searching for something familiar.”

Varric sighed.  “You.”

“Me.”  She laughed again.  That’s when Varric realized that this laughter was not amusement; it was the only way her body was able to relieve any of the tension he could almost feel undulating off of her in waves.  “He left me, and even still is trying to get me to help him. Can you believe it?”

“I wish I couldn’t.”

Hawke smiled.  “I miss him, Varric.  Not the Anders that blew up the Chantry, not the Anders that hated me when I got pregnant.  I miss the Anders that opened the clinic in Darktown. The Anders that saved my brother in the Deep Roads.  The Anders that I fell in love with. And now, he’s trapped in here.

“And that means that I’ve lost him forever.”


End file.
